


Day 4: Christmas Cards

by ConsultingPurplePants



Series: 25 Days of Fic-Mas (originally posted to tumblr) [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Christmas, Christmas Cards, Gen, So much angst, This hurt me to write, even i cant handle that, im so sorry, no active dying though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-04
Updated: 2015-12-04
Packaged: 2018-05-04 23:43:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5352821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConsultingPurplePants/pseuds/ConsultingPurplePants
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John receives an unexpected Christmas card.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Day 4: Christmas Cards

**Author's Note:**

> And here is day 4 :)  
> I apologize in advance.

Harry and her flavour of the week (month? months? he has no idea how long it’s been) have invited him over for Christmas dinner, but there’s no way in hell he’s going. He simply refuses to sit around and have her criticize him for finally being the more fucked up one of the two of them. He doesn’t want to feel her hundreds of tiny, passive-aggressive barbs sinking into his skin for an entire evening. _How’re you getting on then, John? Started to move on from all this? How’s your job at the surgery? Oh, sorry I didn’t know..._ He knows she knows what’s happened. How he’s never going to _move on_ from it. She’s just a terrible person that way, and he won’t be subjected to it. Especially not this year, when every statement hurts just a little bit more. Especially since he no longer has a certain tall someone to defend him.

He sighs, pushes himself out of his new (ugly) armchair and limps slowly into the kitchen to pour himself another few fingers of scotch. He looks around for a moment, then immediately regrets it. This kitchen is different, awful. It’s too small to contain a table, has barely enough space for an oven, a fridge, and a sink. It’s white. Very clinical-looking. It is also absolutely devoid of body parts, odd smells, chemicals, and experiments. There’s no microscope to be seen, no beakers and flasks taking up all the counter space. Here, he has nothing to fear from the sugar. Here, he has never had to throw out his food for fear of contamination, and isn’t the scotch supposed to be making him less observant?

The most obvious thing missing, however, is a head of brown curls hovering over his shoulder, criticizing his cooking and his tea-making. Someone sitting at a table, muttering to himself about the decomposition rates of various types of tissue. Shouts of _BORING_ ringing out every now and again. A quiet violin playing when he’s having trouble sleeping (and God, does he need help with that now).

John lets his bad leg go out from under him as he sits (falls) on the ground. His head resting on the cupboard under the sink, he takes a deep drink of scotch in an effort to contain the inevitable tears. He does this every few nights; pushes himself a little too far and ends up a miserable ball of heaving sobs on his own kitchen floor. Harry has every right to consider herself the more put-together one of the family. He hasn’t even been able to drag his arse into work long enough to keep his job. The room begins to spin a little, so he puts down the glass and puts his head between his knees to fight off the bout of dizziness. Just as he’s about to drop off into oblivion (no tears, tonight, and somehow that is the biggest success of his day), he hears a scratching noise outside his door, followed by the sound of paper being slid across the floor.

John almost doesn’t go to pick it up, but eventually his curiosity gets the better of his misery and he shoves his good leg under him. He limps to the door of his tiny, miserable studio flat and collapses back down to the floor to pick up the small envelope that has materialized under his door.

His hands shaking, he lift it to eye level to read the inscription. John H. Watson. Absolutely nothing remarkable about it. Except. Except. He hasn’t seen this handwriting since its owner threw himself off a building despite John’s best efforts to stop him. John looks at the glass of cheap scotch sitting far away on his kitchen floor, then back at the envelope. He steels himself, then slides it open. Inside is a nondescript, perfectly ordinary Christmas card, with little Christmas trees and a reindeer on it. He hesitates for a moment before opening it and reading the simple message inside.

_Happy Christmas, John._

_With love,_

_x_

John’s hand shakes and clenches as he viciously crumples up the card and envelope, the tears flowing freely now, no matter how much alcohol he has tried to blunt them with. These arseholes have been doing this since the beginning, sending him hate mail, stink bombs, anything they could fit in an envelope. This, though, this is a step too far. This is much more personal, and it hurts. So. Much. More.

He eventually manages to pull himself together, off the floor, and into his bed and the oblivion of alcohol-induced sleep, but not before tearing up the envelope and angrily binning it.

In his rage, however, he hasn’t noticed that his address wasn’t written anywhere on the card, or that the handwriting imitation was incredibly (too?) well done. He also hasn’t noticed the small drop of what looks like old blood staining the top right hand corner, or the mark of an old tear stain slightly blurring out the x. He hasn’t noticed that somewhere out there, someone is feeling just as miserable as him.


End file.
